Was told to light up the oven after Jamal Khashoggi’s arrival
A Saudi consulate worker in Istanbul told a Turkish court on
Friday he had been asked to light a tandoor oven less than an hour after Saudi
journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the building where he was killed.
Zeki Demir, a local technician who worked for the consulate,
was giving evidence on the first day of the trial in absentia of 20 Saudi
officials over Khashoggi’s killing, which sparked global outrage and tarnished
the image of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.
Demir said he had been called to the consul’s residence
after Khashoggi entered the nearby consulate to seek his papers. “There were
five to six people there. They asked me to light up the tandoor (oven). There
was an air of panic,” he said.
Khashoggi disappeared after going to the consulate to get
papers for his marriage in October 2018. Some Western governments, as well as
the CIA, said they believed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered
the hit - an accusation Saudi officials denied.
Turkish officials have said one theory police pursued was
that Khashoggi’s killers may have tried to dispose of his body by burning it
after suffocating him and cutting up his corpse.
The indictment accuses two top Saudi officials, former
deputy head of Saudi Arabia’s general intelligence Ahmed al-Asiri and former
royal court adviser Saud al-Qahtani, of instigating “premeditated murder with
monstrous intent”.
It says 18 other defendants were flown to Turkey to kill
Khashoggi, a prominent and well-connected journalist who had grown increasingly
critical of the crown prince.
The defendants are being tried in absentia and are unlikely
ever to be handed over by Saudi Arabia, which has accused Turkey of failing to
cooperate with a separate, largely secretive, trial in Riyadh last year.
In December, a Saudi court sentenced five people to death
and three to jail for the killing, but Khashoggi’s family later said they
forgave his murderers, effectively granting them a formal reprieve under Saudi
law.
A Saudi prosecutor said at the time there was no evidence
connecting Qahtani to the killing and dismissed charges against Asiri.
Basis for further trials?
According to his testimony in the indictment, Demir reported
seeing many skewers of meat and a small barbecue in addition to the oven in the
consul’s garden. Marble slabs around the oven appeared to have changed colour
as if they had been cleaned with a chemical, the indictment reported him as
saying.
Separate witness testimony in the indictment, from the
consul’s driver, said the consul had ordered raw kebabs to be bought from a
local restaurant.
Demir offered to help with the garage door when a car with
darkened windows arrived, but he was told to leave the garden quickly, the
indictment said.
Rights campaigners hope that the Istanbul trial will throw a
fresh spotlight on the case and reinforce the argument for sanctions against
Riyadh or for legal action against the suspects when they travel abroad. “If
the process works, what this trial ...will strengthen is the possibility of
universal jurisdiction,” Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on
extrajudicial executions, told Reuters on the eve of the trial.
That could give European countries, for example, the basis
to launch a trial if any Saudis linked to the case travelled into their
territories, she said. “Justice in these complex environments is not delivered
overnight. But a good process here can build up (evidence for) what can happen
in five years, in 10 years, whenever the circumstances are stronger,” Callamard
said.
Khashoggi’s fiancee Hatice Cengiz, who had waited unknowing
outside the consulate while he was killed, said she would continue to seek
justice “not only in Turkey but everywhere possible”.
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